Last night I had an epiphany concerning sustainability & commerce. I stumbled upon a cache of receipts that I hadn’t placed in my recycle bin and realized that for every transaction we conduct in our lives in which a receipt is generated, somewhere, an unknown time ago, a tree was cut down to supply the paper for the transaction. Meaning that every time we buy, something had to die.

If our economic system is built upon a standard in which commerce must always be increasing, there will most likely be a point in which there are no more trees. Maybe in some Brave New World there will be a cashless & paperless society that wouldn’t be the problem.
Oh wait.

Now if I were to make something, and you were to make something or even have a service, and we exchanged our values & services then nothing had to die. –But that just sounds too perfect… How could that be applied to a large scale in such a specialized society? I’m open for answers…